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Jan Resseger: Ohio’s Failed Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2019 //
5

Jan Resseger writes here about the charter schools in Ohio that received federal funding but never opened or closed soon after opening.

In Ohio, nearly $36 million was wasted, and that was only between 2006 and 2014. Throughout the 25-year life of the federal Charter Schools Program, the loss was far greater but has not yet been documented.

She writes:

I suppose the idea is that if you scatter hundreds of seeds across a state, they’ll grow and enrich the educational environment.  But as I examine Ohio’s list of failed or never-opened, CSP-funded charter schools, I can see that the seeds were scattered so widely that they weren’t particularly noticeable even when they came up. Unless there was a splashy scandal or a school was widely advertised on the side of city buses, nobody would have had any idea of the existence or failure of most of the seeds that did come up. And anyway a lot of them never sprouted at all.  Because the Charter Schools Program has lacked oversight from the U.S. Department of Education and because Ohio’s charter schools are poorly regulated by a large number of nonprofit agencies that serve as sponsors, the Ohio press has—until NPE’s Asleep at the Wheel report—not to my knowledge reported that the U.S. Department of Education is funding a lot of failed or never-opened schools. Until now, the failure of this program has been virtually invisible.

In the the list of failed or never-opened Ohio charter schools released last Friday by the Network for Public Education, NPE reports: “Two hundred ninety-three Ohio charter schools were awarded grants through the U.S. Department of Education’s (U.S. DOE) Charter Schools Program (CSP) from money that the U.S. Department of Education gave to the states between 2006-2014.  At this time, at least 117 (40%) of those (Ohio) charter schools were closed or never opened at all.” NPE explains that 20 of the Ohio charter schools on the list never opened; ninety-seven of the Ohio charter schools receiving CSP grants opened but subsequently shut down.

I suspect that like me, hardly anybody in Ohio has heard of most of the 20 schools that received CSP funding but never opened. Here are their names: Academy for Urban Solutions; Buckeye Academy; Central Ohio Early College Academy; Cleveland Arts and Literature Academy; Cleveland Lighthouse Charter Community School West; Columbus Entrepreneurial Academy; Cuyahoga Valley Academy; Medina City Schools Technology School; New Albany School for Performing Arts Middle School 6-8; Phoenix Village Academy Secondary 2; Rising Star Elementary School; School of Tomorrow; Summit Academy Community Schools in Alliance, Marion, Massillon, Columbus, and Cincinnati; Technology and Arts Academy of Cleveland; Vision into Action Academy-South Columbus; and WinWin Academy.  It is difficult to tell from the names of most of these schools even where it was intended that they would be located.

Ninety-seven CSP-funded schools in Ohio have shut down, but from the list, it is not possible to discern whether they were shut down by their sponsors for conflicts of interest or fraud, or whether their sponsors determined they were failing their students academically, or whether they just went broke. Most of the CSP grants awarded to closed or never-opened schools were in the six figure range—$150,000 or more.  Two of the schools that failed or were never opened had been awarded CSP grants over $700,000; three had been granted between $600,000 and $700,000; two had received between $500,000 and $600,000; and 25 had been awarded between $400,000 and $500,000.

The federal Charter Schools Program is neoliberal by design.  It awards public funding to private operators—individuals and companies—to run schools in competition with the traditional public schools. One primary problem with the CSP along with other schemes to privatize the public schools is that oversight is lacking to protect the rights of the students and to protect the stewardship of tax dollars.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure, Ohio, Privatization

Florida Education Association to Legislature: Stop Robbing Public Schools to Benefit Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
April 27, 2019 //
8

 

Florida is a puzzle. Parents and taxpayers support their community public schools and regularly vote to tax themselves to pay for them. Yet in the general election, they elect legislators who have a financial stake in privatization and are riddled with conflicts of interest.  Some legislators are employed by charter schools and their related companies; some have family members who own and/or operate charter schools. Until the voters figure out that they are being hornswoggled, they will continue to have a Legislature that robs money from their public schools to pay for unaccountable, inefficient charter schools.

 

                            

FEA: Legislature needs to heed voters and fund neighborhood public schools

 

TALLAHASSEE — Time and again, Florida’s electorate has demonstrated broad, bipartisan consensus on the need to increase funding for our students and neighborhood public schools.

 

The evidence of their support for investment in our schools can be found in the tens of thousands of petitions that the Florida Education Association (FEA) is delivering today, in the nearly 2 million Floridians who voted in 2018 to increase their local taxes in order to help schools, and consistently through public-opinion polls.

 

However, House leaders don’t appear to be listening.

 

“Stakeholders around this state have chosen to support their neighborhood public schools through local referendums, choosing to pay out of their own pockets to provide for students and keep qualified educators in classrooms,” said FEA President Fedrick Ingram. “The Florida House now wants to take that money in yet another attempt to defund our neighborhood public schools.”

 

Under House Bill (HB) 7123, money collected locally to support neighborhood public schools would be sent to charter schools and for-profit, out-of-state charter operators. The FEA calls on the House to leave the locally generated dollars alone and to instead follow the Senate’s lead in funding a substantial increase in the state budget’s per-student base allocation for our schools.

 

While financed by taxpayer dollars, charter schools are privately run. They differ markedly in several ways from the neighborhood public schools that educate the great majority of our students:

  • Public schools’ budgets are transparent — in order to get public support for local referendums, school districts had to prove the need for additional money. There is no such financial transparency for charter schools.
  • What little we do know about how charter schools spend their money paints a very troubling picture. Charter schools spend a much lower percentage of their revenue on instruction than public schools.
  • Instead of spending money on students, many charter schools spend in excess of $1 million a year of taxpayer money in fees to for-profit management companies.
  • Academic Solutions Academy in Fort Lauderdale, for instance, spends about 25 percent of all the taxpayer dollars it receives on instructional services, according to a school audit.
  • While HB 7123 does include language that says charter schools must use local levies for voter-authorized purposes, there appears to be no enforcement mechanism for that provision. How can voters be sure that charter schools are using the money the way voters intended, and how will charter schools be held accountable if they don’t?

 

The diversion of locally generated funds would represent one more sad chapter in the story of Florida’s failure to adequately support high quality neighborhood public schools.

 

Florida now ranks among the bottom 10 states nationally in funding for our students, and education spending remains below pre-recession levels. The average teacher salary in Florida has dropped to 46th in the nation, while many school staff earn a wage below the federal poverty line. We face a growing teacher shortage. More than 4,000 classrooms were without a qualified teacher at the start of this school year, and there may soon be more than 10,000 teacher vacancies according to Florida Department of Education projections.

 

The public and educators want change. More than 23,000 Floridians have spoken by petition to call for a major reinvestment in our neighborhood public schools. The printed petitions were delivered to the office of the speaker of the Florida House on Tuesday, April 23, following an FEA news conference at the Capitol. News conference speakers included FEA President Ingram; Justin Katz, president of the Palm Beach County Classroom Teachers Association; and Karla Hernandez-Mats, president of United Teachers of Dade.

 

We must fund our future. Find the FEA petition at https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/time-to-step-up-for-neighborhood-public-schools.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Florida, Privatization

Trump Runs the Federal Government Like a Charter School

By dianeravitch
April 27, 2019 //
58

 

Mitchell Robinson, Professor at Michigan State University, has a brilliant insight. Donald Trump runs the federal government (to the extent that he runs anything other than his Twitter feed) like a Charter School.

He write:

“One of Trump’s major goals as president* has been to eliminate or weaken regulations in eight major categories: agriculture, education, environment, finances, health care, housing, labor, telecommunications, and transportation. And on this one issue, even his detractors have to admit he’s exceeded their expectations. As of 2018, the Trump administration was eliminating 22 regulations for every 1 new regulation approved, surpassing their stated goal of “2 out for every 1 in.” These actions represent nothing less than a wholesale dismantling of the federal government’s oversight responsibility for every major sector of the country’s economic and environmental enterprises, many of which have been in place for decades. Taken along with the dramatic number of judicial appointments that the administration has jammed through, Trump’s influence on the nation’s direction is hugely outsized when compared to his legislative impact, which has been negligible.

“This focus on rolling back regulations was, of course, the entire rationale for the existence of charter schools. That the “purpose” of charters has now morphed perversely into a profit seeking endeavor only reinforces the importance of a lack of oversight to the proliferation of charters across the country. Charter management corporations depend on this lack of governmental accountability to hire uncertified teachers, pay them less than teachers in traditional public schools, pay charter leaders more, and keep teachers unions out of their schools. And when forced to play by the same rules as public schools, they just can’t compete.”

In addition, he hires completely unqualified people and has high staff turnover.

What’s more, he is in it for the money, just like so many charter leaders.

Robinson’s hope is that Trump’s administration closes as quickly as most charter schools.

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Reform

Hillary Clinton Advisor: No Regrets About Our Support for Charter Schools!

By dianeravitch
April 26, 2019 //
84

Catherine Brown was a senior advisor to the Hillary Clinton campaign. She has long been associated with the neoliberal Center for American Progress. She also worked for former Congressman George Miller, who was a favorite of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), the hedge fund managers’ charter-promoting organization.

In this article, published fittingly enough at Campbell Brown’s website The 74, Brown says she has no regrets about supporting charter schools. She defends Beto O’Rourke, whose wife is deeply enmeshed in charter schools in Texas, and who has expressed his admiration for privately managed charters in the past.

Curiously, she feels no embarrassment about embracing a “reform” that destabilizes public schools and that is endorsed by every Red State governor and legislature.

She doesn’t seem to care about the fiscal impact of charters on the public schools that enroll 85-90% of the nation’s students. Why does she prioritize charters over public schools?

It is interesting that she does not address the recent NPE report demonstrating that the federal Charter Schools Program wasted nearly $1 billion between the years 2006-2014 (during the Obama administration) on charter schools that never opened or closed soon after opening. About 1 of every 3 charters funded by the federal program failed.

Nor does she address the daily reports of charter fraud, waste, abuse, and embezzlement.

Nor does Brown mention that 90% of the charters across the nation are non-union.

Nor that their biggest single private funder is the anti-union Walton Foundation.

Oh, no, she favors “high-quality” charter schools, you know, the ones that cherry pick the highest scoring students and post high test scores due to their admissions and discipline policies.

This article is a strong statement of the neoliberal Democrat view of charters, which has helped to defund public schools and undermine teacher unions across the country.

The overlap between the views of Betsy DeVos and neoliberal Democrats is hard to miss.

Note to the Center for American Progress:

Progressive Democrats support real public schools. Progressive Democrats do not support privately managed charter schools. Progressive Democrats do not support a sector that was built to smash teachers’ unions and that is 90% non-union. Progressive Democrats support democratically controlled public schools. 

 

 

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Democrats for Education Reform, Funding, Walton Foundation

Oakland: Remember Laurene Powell Jobs’ $100 Million Giveaway Contest to Reinvent High Schools? This One Collapsed

By dianeravitch
April 26, 2019 //
7

Remember when Laurene Powell Jobs announced that she was running a competition for ideas to reinvent the high school? She was offering $10 million to each winning proposal, which she called “Super Schools.”

Nearly 700 proposals were entered, but only 10 were chosen.

One of the winners was in Oakland, California, a district that has been subject to nonstop disruption, charters, and and constant meddling by the Eli Broad foundation. For years, the district has been led by Broadies, who have run it into a ditch and failed to revive its fortunes.

The Oakland winner planned to open a Super School that incorporated Mark Zuckerberg’s Summit Learning online platform.

But things went poorly after Oakland’s Broadie superintendent Antwan Wilson was lured to the District of Columbia to be its chancellor (where he was soon ousted after it was revealed that he pulled strings to get his daughter into one of the best public schools, a practice that Wilson had forbidden for others. Wilson is now running an education consulting business.)

Two years ago, the Oakland Super School was abandoned before it opened. 

The turmoil in the district, which has been a near constant for years, made it impossible to open.

Summit Public Schools, which operates a chain of charter schools, with support from the Oakland school district and Mayor Libby Schaaf’s office, submitted a winning proposal for a charter school focusing on personal learning and real-world experiences. The goal was to open the new school at the California College of the Arts on Broadway in Rockridge in fall 2018.

But the effort started to fall apart over the last several months and was ultimately abandoned in recent weeks, The Chronicle has learned. Now, Summit leaders will use the money for one of their existing charter schools in Daly City.

“There are just better ways for us to help kids in the Bay Area,” said Jason Solomon, senior director of advocacy and engagement at Summit Public Schools, which operates eight charter schools in the Bay Area and three in Washington state.

Solomon noted that the team’s entry to build the new school included the support of former Oakland Superintendent Antwan Wilson, who resigned this year to lead the Washington, D.C., schools. On top of the turnover in leadership, the district is grappling with the need to close or consolidate schools given declining enrollment while juggling a $30 million budget shortfall over the next year.

Community groups were unhappy that the proposed charter would be sited very close to an existing Oakland public school that had not yet been disrupted and destroyed.

With Antwan Wilson gone, Summit charters was not sure they would have a champion so they shifted the funding to one of their schools in Daly City.

Summit substitutes computer-based instruction for real teachers, and it has driven out in places as distant as Connecticut and Kansas, by parents and students.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Privatization, Technology

Oakland: A Must-Read Lexicon of Charter Frauds

By dianeravitch
April 26, 2019 //
16

 

Jane Nylund, a parent activist in Oakland, wrote this incisive overview of charter frauds in her district and submitted it to the Task Force reviewing the California charter law. Please copy and forward to the Task Force at:

chartertaskforce@cde.ca.gov

She writes:

For fifteen years as a parent, volunteer, and employee of Oakland Unified, I’ve been witness to what is now a full blown privatization movement in Oakland under our “portfolio district” model. A movement designed to crush our real public schools and privatize them; a movement to close our schools and gentrify our neighborhoods. A movement to allow outside interests and corporations to feed at the trough. And the current laws in California that allow this to happen, unchecked and unfettered. And the absolute failure of any of it to collectively improve the lives of our most vulnerable children. 

 The time for this damaging experiment on our children is over. Stop clutching at the billionaires’ purse strings, while at the same time declaring that more choice is the answer. Here’s why it isn’t.

 Choice in Oakland-Do you want fries with that?

What does choice in Oakland mean? The model here isn’t much different than saturating the poor neighborhoods with cheap fast food. Oh, there’s choice all right-McDonalds, Burger King, KFC, or Taco Bell. Plenty of choice, take your pick. How about a nice juicy steak? Forget it, you don’t need that choice, but here’s some other choices for you. Poor nutrition that fills you temporarily, but ends up starving you of any real sustenance. Saturating neighborhoods with charter schools is the same business model. I heard an East Oakland resident say, in a public meeting, that charter schools were like having drug dealers on every corner. Keepin’ it real….

 Scandals? You want ’em, we got ’em

 Scandal #1-American Indian Charter

The CEO of AIMS, Ben Chavis stole $3.8M from his schools in rent and paid it to his own leasing company which held the leases for his own schools. Self-dealing Gone Wild. He is in jail in North Carolina awaiting trial for money laundering and mail fraud. You’d think the school would be shut down after that? Nope, the school board wilted under the facade of those amazing test scores, gamed in part by shutting out African Americans and SPED from the AIMS schools, as well as having obscenely high rates of attrition. 

https://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/turmoil-returns-for-charter-schools/Content?oid=9074129  

 Scandal #2-Bay Area Technology School

A Gulen school run by Turkish teachers and a Turkish school board. In a squabble worthy of a B-rated movie, the principal was forced out but somehow managed to flee to Australia with $400,000 of our hard-earned tax dollars in his pocket. Nice gig if you can get it. 

https://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/former-principal-alleges-oaklands-baytech-school-was-source-of-funding-for-gulen-movement/Content?oid=19390167  

 Scandal #3-Oakland School for the Arts

Full disclosure-I’m a huge arts supporter, and I know plenty of parents who support the school and who have kids there. It’s not the program; it’s the enrollment policy. OSA is an experiment in what happens when a school supported by our former governor is allowed to select its own student body. OSA is now the second wealthiest school in Oakland and has virtually no ELL. How can that possibly happen when the school has a lottery? Easy. You have the kids do an audition and allow the kids into the lottery based on the results of the audition. Private schools do that. Is it discriminatory? Yes, the ACLU said as much.  Does it violate charter law? Yes. Has anyone done anything about it. No, because of big $$$ and the support of Jerry Brown and Friends. Alternatively, Jerry could have supported more arts funding in public schools instead of opening OSA. Food for thought….

 Scandal #4-Castlemont Junior Academy and Primary Academy

This was a script that practically wrote itself. Open charters right next door to the neighborhood elementary, Parker. Next, install a OUSD board member, James Harris on the charter board, as well as Yana Smith, the wife of former OUSD Chief of Schools Allen Smith. While it might have been legal, the perceived conflict of interest was breathtaking. Lastly, watch in amazement as the charters implode a few months later, due to low enrollment. Parker, the real public school has to enroll approx. 85 children from the elementary charter mid-year. It doesn’t get more disruptive than that. Startup funding? Gone….

https://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/two-highly-touted-oakland-charter-schools-quickly-closed-andmdash-and-now-owe-the-district-money/Content?oid=5091277  

 Scandal #5-Aspire Eres and the annexing of the Derby Parcel

When Reed Hastings says “Jump!”, Aspire says, “How high?” Aspire, in a bid to purchase city-owned public land for charter school expansion, tried to negotiate a backroom deal with the city. The expansion had not even been approved by the school board, but that’s okay because Reed Hastings doesn’t like elected school boards anyway. They just get in the way of his personal business. Public school activists found out, organized the public, pushed back hard, and thwarted the deal. 

https://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/oaklands-exclusive-deal-to-sell-city-owned-land-to-charter-school-draws-opposition/Content?oid=15872497  

 Scandal #6-the 100% Grad Rate myth

This is one of my personal favorites because of the inevitable comparison of district schools’ to charter schools’ performance. How many more times do we need to see grad rates/test scores stats tossed around on social media, popping up like so many toxic mushrooms. How can a charter school claim 100% (or close to it) grad rates when they lose 40, 50, or 60% of their children in high school? Easy, charters typically don’t backfill. Real public schools backfill; they fill that seat as soon as a student wants it, at any time. Any student, not just the easy ones.

 Scandal #7-Charters are superior to district schools because of their amazing test scores! (Marketing 101)

See Scandal #6. Until charters can claim that they educate the same number of FRPL, ELL, and SPED kids, and also have the same number of suspensions/attrition, there is no valid or fair comparison here. The student populations served (or not) are usually significantly different.

 Scandal #8-the “rightsizing” myth

Portfolio models “rightsize” (translation:downsize) by closing mostly district schools. But the schools don’t close; they are privatized into charters via Prop 39. Out of 18 of the last Oakland district school closures, 14 were converted to charters. This scandal illustrates the utter lack of local control on any charter openings/closings. Easy to open, nearly impossible to close, favoring charter growth by design. OUSD admitted that closing schools doesn’t save money, and yet they (Walton/Bloomberg-bought board) push the narrative constantly. It’s a mantra that’s growing stale but refuses to die.

 Scandal #9-the “high demand” for charters myth

See Scandal #8. How to create demand? Close your neighborhood elementary schools, which then feed into the middle schools (demand dries up there as well). Then, open a charter right near these same schools. Doesn’t take a genius to see how that will turn out. Ask the students at Roots International how they feel about their neighborhood school closure. But our charter-friendly ($$$) school board fully supports this portfolio model; there are charters right around the corner that former Roots students can attend instead. Instant charter demand creation.

https://www.kqed.org/news/11721015/the-big-fight-over-a-small-school-in-oakland-what-you-need-to-know  

 Scandal #10

The fact that all these scandals exist at all, and that public school advocates, as well as tenacious local reporters, have to do the important work of digging up the information and presenting it to the public. This is what accountability looks like in Oakland and the rest of California. We are getting tired of doing the job that the Office of Charter Schools is supposed to be doing, but doesn’t. And this list is far from exhaustive; it’s likely just the tip of the iceberg, because of the lack of transparency.

 Our school district loses $57M a year to unfettered charter expansion. It’s time to get back to some no-nonsense approaches to this problem such as real local control, as well as including impact to district finances. Charter schools don’t have the right to expand just because it’s what the Waltons and Reed Hastings want. The Waltons don’t send their children to Oakland public schools.  District schools aren’t offered the same expansion opportunity and if they were, Oakland Technical would be the size of a small college by now. This failed experiment on our most vulnerable children must end, and I implore the task force to make the recommendations that will serve the needs of ALL students and stop supporting an agenda that clearly favors charter expansion, the theft of taxpayers’ dollars, and not much else. The time is now, and if not now, when?

 Thank you for your attention in this matter.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Competition, Education Reform

Los Angeles: The LA Times Prefers a School Board Member with Neither Experience Nor Knowledge

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2019 //
8

 

The Los Angeles Times wrote an editorial endorsing Heather Repenning over Jackie Goldberg for the LAUSD seat in a special election. The editorial admitted that Jackie Goldberg has the experience and knowledge that her opponent lacks but the Times preferred a blank slate.

Repenning admittedly knows little about education issues but she previously worked as an aide to Mayor Eric Garcetti. In the primary, and she said she would not take charter money. Now that she is in a runoff with the far better qualified Jackie Goldberg, Repenning has decided that it is okay to take money from the charter billionaires. 

The Times lauded her as independent. The fact that she is now the favorite of people like billionaire Republican Bill Bloomfield is evidence that she is not independent. She will cast her vote, if elected, to support the Eli Broad privatization and Disruption agenda.

The Times posted some of the letters to the editor that it received objecting to its endorsement of an unqualified candidate, including one from me.

One letter came from a retired principal, who wrote, “The Times is repeating the mistake it made when it endorsed Ref Rodriguez in 2015 and other candidates bought and paid for by billionaire privatizers.” Rodriguez operated a charter chain at the time of his election, but was removed from the board after he was convicted on felony counts for campaign finance violations. He did not step down until the board had selected the unqualified, inexperienced Austin Beutner as superintendent of the nation’s second largest school district.

This is the Times’ description of Jackie Goldberg:

“She’s brimming with experience, smarts and humor — and connections. She’s been a teacher and served as a member of the school board, the City Council and the state Assembly, and she knows everyone involved in the world of education in California. To say that her chances of winning the May 14 runoff are high would be an understatement.

”Nor would it be a terrible thing if that happened. Goldberg’s institutional memory and her talent for digging to the heart of an issue would be of value to the board.”

So why didn’t the Times endorse her? Because the teachers already endorsed her.

Educators know and trust Jackie.

The charter billionaires know and trust her opponent.

I say to the voters of District 5: Vote for the candidate with experience and knowledge.

Don’t let the billionaires buy another seat on the school board.

Vote for Jackie Goldberg on May 14.

She will represent you, your children, and your schools, not Eli Broad and the other billionaires.

 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Los Angeles

Eva Moskowitz Accused of Violating Student Rights, Wins $10 Million from DeVos, Will Receive an Honorary Degree from Tufts

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2019 //
26

 

As Leonie Haimson explains in this post, it has been a busy few weeks for Eva Moskowitz, founder and CEO of NYC’s controversial Success Academy charter chain.

Once again, her chain has been accused of violating the rights of students; Betsy DeVos awarded $9.8 million to her schools, added to the $43.4 million  Eva previously received from the federal Charter Schools Program; she will receive an honorary degree from Tufts University; and the President of Harvard University is giving the commencement speech to her graduating class.

How does it happen that the president of the nation’s most prestigious university is speaking to what may be a graduating class of a few dozen students at a charter school? .

“The former president of Tufts, Lawrence Bacow, who is the current president of Harvard is scheduled to speak at the Success high school’s graduation, which last year only graduated 16 out of the 73 students who entered the school in Kindergarten  or first grade.  No doubt both occurrences were influenced by the fact that the head of the Success board, hedge funder Steve Galbreath, is also on the Tufts board of trustees and heads its investment committee.”

Follow the money.

Don’t be surprised if next year Moskowitz land DeVos herself, America’s leading charter school champion.

 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy, New York City, Privatization

Chicago: Teachers at Unionized Charter Schools Plan to Strike

By dianeravitch
April 24, 2019 //
15

When the Waltons and Gates and Bloomberg read this, they will be very disappointed. Chagrined. The point of charters is to bust unions, they thought.

NEWS RELEASE:
For Immediate Release| ctulocal1.org

CONTACT: Chris Geovanis, 312-329-6250, 312-446-4939 (m), ChrisGeovanis@ctulocal1.org

CTU charter members to announce strike date against operators

Teachers, support staff will walk out if demands for living wages, adequate student supports, pension rights, protections for immigrant and diverse learners are not met.

CHICAGO—Chicago could be on the cusp of a third strike against charter operators in the current school year, as negotiations drag on with operators of five schools, and four additional schools consider striking this spring. This would be the first multi-employer charter strike in U.S. history.

CTU educators will join City Colleges clerks and technical workers in AFT/IFT Local 1708 at 4:30 PM on Thursday, April 25 at the Arturo Velazquez Westside Technical Institute at 2800 S. Western Ave., where both groups will announce strike dates. Then workers will head two blocks north to Instituto Progresso del Latino’s IHSCA charter campus at 2520 S. Western Ave. to rally.

CTU charter members at two schools run by Instituto Progresso del Latino share a common target with City College clerks. City Colleges chancellor Juan Salgado ran Instituto before he was appointed as top brass at City Colleges. Under his leadership, workers at both shops have gotten the shaft, charge teachers. City Colleges clerks have been without a contract for almost three years, while Instituto under both Salgado and his heirs has steered public dollars away from classroom needs into a bloated bureaucracy and non-educational spending.

The five schools considering striking employ 134 CTU members who educate almost 1,800 students. All five schools voted overwhelmingly to strike earlier this month, with 94 percent of union members voting, and 97 percent voting to strike if there is no progress at the bargaining table.

CTU members are demanding protections built into the contract to provide special education students with the services they both need and are entitled to under federal law. They’re demanding more support for English language learners and immigrant students—including sanctuary protections enshrined in contract language. And union members are demanding adequate staffing and resources for schools that confront serious shortages of both, along with equal pay for equal work with their colleagues in CPS, who teach the same student population for better wages and working conditions.

At ChiArts, which was cofounded by wealthy investment banker Jim Mabie, teachers are also fighting to force the operator to contribute to their pension fund—a move opposed by the board at the same time that Mabie is trying to gut the pensions of striking Chicago Symphony Orchestra musicians. Mabie sits on both boards.

High turnover is a chronic issue at the schools, driven by systemic under-resourcing and poor wages and working conditions. Staff churn, which can be upwards of 20% per year or more at some schools, undermines students’ learning conditions and the stability of school communities.

Union charter workers want to reform these practices with these operators as part of an effort to reform the entire charter industry, which chronically undercuts investment in academic programs and student supports while expanding bloated bureaucracies, inflating executive salaries and shunting education dollars into high management fees.

While this number could grow, the schools announcing a strike date include:

  • IHSCA, the Instituto Health Sciences Career Academy, which serves more than 700 high school students. City Colleges chancellor Juan Salgado had oversight of IHSCA and Instituto’s other school programs and civic projects, yet failed to ensure that public dollars went into classrooms instead of Instituto’s management expansion and fee structure for ‘managing’ its school portfolio.
  • IHSCA is bargaining a joint contract with another small Instituto-controlled school, IJLA, the Instituto Justice Leadership Academy. The school serves just under 100 students aged 17-21 who previously left school and are seeking a high school diploma.  Both schools are ovewhelmingly low-income and Latinx, with high percentages of limited English-speaking students.
  • ChiArts, where more than 40 teachers are fighting for more classroom resources, and contributions to their pension fund. Management at the publicly funded selective enrollment school of 600 students has refused. Wealthy investment banker and ChiArts’ co-founder Jim Mabie is also treasurer of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s board, where he and his fellow board members are fighting to cancel the pensions of the orchestra’s striking world class musicians, even though moving musicians into a ‘defined contributions’ style plan would be more expensive than the current pension plan.
  • Latino Youth High School, or LYHS, run by CMO—charter management organization—Pilsen Wellness Center (PWC), which has demanded a longer school day and school year plus reductions in contractual benefits, while rejecting the union’s demand for equal pay for equal work. The school’s 220 students, who suffer from high rates of trauma, are almost 90% Latinx and 10% Black.
  • YCLA—Youth Connection Leadership Academy—where CTU members are bargaining with charter operator YCCS, which, like many operators, has inflated executives positions while shortchanging spending on students’ academic needs. YCLA’s CEO earns almost $180,000 per year and the top deputy makes almost $160,000 per year, while some educators make barely a fifth of that. Management has drawn complaints that range from body-shaming to shortchanging special education students at the overwhelmingly Black, low-income school on Chicago’s South Side.

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The Chicago Teachers Union represents nearly 25,000 teachers and educational support personnel working in schools funded by City of Chicago School District 299, and by extension, the nearly 400,000 students and families they serve. The CTU is an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers and the Illinois Federation of Teachers and is the third-largest teachers local in the United States. For more information please visit the CTU website at www.ctulocal1.org.
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Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Education Industry, Privatization

Rhode Island: Governor Raimondo Takes First Steps Towards State Takeover of Providence Schools

By dianeravitch
April 24, 2019 //
11

 

Governor Gina Raimondo, formerly a hedge fund manager, is unhappy with the public schools of Providence. Their test scores are low. They are definitely lower than the schools of Massachusetts.

She is thinking of a state takeover.

Whatever might she have in mind?

One assumes privatization by charter schools.

Hedge funders have a bad habit of believing that privatization fixes low test scores.

All they lack is evidence.

If they ran their hedge funds like they try to run schools, they would be bankrupt.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Privatization, Providence, Rhode Island
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